In order to foster a play environment that is a fun and safe for all our players, Snail Games separates player activities and behavior into two categories: Honorable and Dishonorable. While some dishonorable behavior may only be discouraged rather than prohibited, Snail reserves the right to take action against any behavior it deems unwanted within the communities that form around our games. It is with earnest hope that we urge each player to conduct themselves with honor at all times, regardless of the behavior of others.

Harassment

Chat

The gaming community as a whole, and its diverse array of subgroups and communities, employ a plethora of standards for conduct. Snail seeks to welcome a wide variety of gamers into its lands, so it is important for all players to familiarize themselves with our standards. TLDR: don’t troll, don’t flame, don’t feed trolls or fan flames, don’t seek to offend, don’t seek to marginalize others or their opinions, and honor reasonable requests from other players to cease behavior that may be dishonorable. Remember that you are an honored guest of Snail; freedom of speech is a privilege that is limited by these standards, and it may be revoked if they are not observed.

Real life threats

Threats regarding physical harm outside our games are viewed with the utmost seriousness. Snail personnel are not qualified to provide mental, emotional or legal counsel. However, we will provide contact information for such services, and will alert emergency and law enforcement services of such threats. These behaviors can have far-reaching and long-lasting real-life consequences, as emergency and law enforcement services also take such threats very seriously. When such cases arise, Snail will be unable to offer any other services to the involved parties until emergency and law enforcement services have called an “all clear” regarding the threat. The physical safety of all persons, player or otherwise, is paramount! After an “all clear,” involved accounts may be subject to review by Snail for dishonorable behavior.

Guarded Topics

A number of chat topics are prohibited when discussed in a negative context. In fact, your local or federal laws may prohibit discrimination based upon some or all of these traits: race / ethnicity, color, religion / belief structure, national origin / citizenship, disability / physical ailment, age, gender, sexual orientation, or veteran status. As the saying goes, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Forbidden Topics

Several topics and categories of speech are prohibited at all times, regardless of context. Players must not discuss extreme or violent sexual acts, acts of extreme violence, real-life illegal or controlled substances, or real-life illegal activities. Players must not make personal attacks aimed at any entity or group of entities, real or perceived as real. Obscene, crude, vulgar, or pornographic references, including formal or slang references to human anatomy or bodily functions are also prohibited. Additionally, we reserve the right to take action against any other chat found to be undesirable in our games.

Mutual combat

When a report of dishonorable behavior is received, all involved players are investigated for any policy violations around the time of the incident. This is not limited to the reported offense, nor is the reporting player exempt from responsibility for their behavior. If reported behavior occurs in a private channel or conversation, and everyone present is acting dishonorably, Snail may not take any action.

Guild channel

In most cases, Guilds are free to set their own standards of conduct in their own channel. However, the topics of Extreme Sexuality/Violence or Real Life Threats will be investigated and actionable to the fullest extent of Snail’s policies. Additionally, Snail retains the right to adjudicate player behavior as it sees fit, so don’t go too crazy in Guild chat.

Clear Vs. Masked

When reviewing potential harassment violations, Snail must consider every reasonable interpretation of the behavior in question, both in and out of context. Please refrain from attempting to violate Snail policies “under the radar,” as such attempts may be construed as attempting to defraud Snail staff, a behavior more dishonorable than some harassment violations. Additionally, while our games were originally created for other markets, we must enforce these policies with the North American market in mind; nomenclature that is appropriate elsewhere in the world may be inappropriate here.

Naming

Due to the persistence of character names in the game world, names found in violation of the harassment policy will be viewed as more dishonorable than corresponding chat. Additionally, names must not reference any of the Guarded Topics mentioned above, in any context. This is to avoid eliciting negative chat related to the Guarded Topics.

Ongoing Harassment

When one player places another on their ignore list, any attempt by the latter to circumvent the feature is strictly prohibited.

Alternate Accounts/Characters

Established

If the ignored character and the character who is perpetuating the harassment are on the same account, or on different accounts registered to the same player, the account of the harassing character will receive a penalty for direct circumvention of the ignore feature. This may result in account closure.

New

New accounts found participating in ongoing harassment are closed.

Collusion

If the ignored character and the character who is perpetuating the harassment are on different accounts, and the accounts are registered to different players, the account of the harassing character will receive a penalty for colluding to circumvent the ignore feature. Even honorable dialogue may be actionable if the harassing character demonstrates knowledge of their friend’s addition to the targeted player’s ignore list. This may result in account closure.

Physical Harassment

Heroes of Gaia is an Open PVP world, not for the faint of heart! Players are expected to resolve conflict through honorable combat whenever possible, and to rely on their friends, Guildmates, and whoever else happens to be around when they are beset by dishonorable foes. Snail may investigate in extreme cases where a large group is targeting a player to such an extent that gameplay becomes impossible for extended periods of time.

Zone area disruption

Intentional Overload

Players are prohibited from congregating in a manner which can cause server crashes or high latency. While we applaud those with the courage to peacefully stand up for their convictions, our games are entertainment services; player behavior that disrupts the play experiences of other players in ways not intended by design is not a peaceful demonstration.

Spamming

The chat system prevents standard spamming by throttling message frequency. However, transmitting the same message repeatedly with no reasonable purpose is not permitted.

External advertising

While players are free to communicate about out-of-game topics, advertising out-of-game products and services unrelated to expanding our community is an unwanted distraction.

Gambling/casino

Advertising of player-run casinos is prohibited. We advise against participating in player-run casinos, as Snail will be unable to assist with any losses resulting from a casino that does not pay out as expected or promised.

Content sales/purchase

Snail discourages the use of third-party web sites for the buying and selling of gold and other game content such as items. Game systems have been provided to facilitate such transactions in a secure manner that avoids unnecessary risk to buyers and sellers. Snail is unable to assist with any fraud resulting from transactions external to the game.

Snail Interaction Policy

Snail’s passion is to provide outstanding game experiences. While every effort is made to ensure those experiences remain seamless and worry-free, our players may occasionally need to interact with members of our team, be they Customer Service, Community, Production, or any of the other integral members of our family. It is important to remember the following points when interacting with Snail agents. In some cases, ignoring these directives may result in account actions.

Harassment

Snail agents are responsible for representing our company and remaining respectful and receptive when interacting with those outside of Snail Games. In turn, we request that when dealing with Snail agents, our players maintain a reasonable level of calm and respect. We appreciate the passion of our community, however abusive chat is not conducive to getting your concerns resolved.

Attempts to Defraud

When making requests of, reporting issues to, or answering questions from Snail agents, players are expected to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Sound familiar? Whatever terms you prefer, do not attempt to trick, swindle, cheat, deceive, misdirect, fabricate, withhold information from, or fake out Snail agents.

Disobeying or Ignoring Agents

All directives from Snail agents must be followed as quickly as possible.

Impersonating Agents

Representing oneself as an Agent of Snail, or as someone who can influence Snail or its Agents, in a manner intended to take advantage of or exert authority over others is strictly prohibited.

Scamming

Caveat Emptor! Players are encouraged to limit all trades to exchanges that can be completed in a single use of the trade function, or alternately to use the Stall system to buy and sell goods, as Support will not assist victims of scams. In addition to typical item/money crawfishes, services (e.g., “I’ll run you through the instance in exchange for X.”), loans, and gambling are not supported by Snail.

Exploitation

Altering game files or using external software to interact with Snail Games products in any way not expressly authorized by Snail is a serious violation of the game’s integrity, and will not be tolerated. Making use of gameplay that is not functioning as intended to acquire an advantage over other players is prohibited, and accounts found to have done so may be subject to penalties such as reversal of exploitive gains, and account actions up to and including account closure. All players are expected to immediately report any game aspect that may provide such opportunities, and to avoid using it.

Automation & Multi-Boxing

The use of external software to automate any gameplay decision is prohibited. This includes macros containing delays that facilitate circumvention of ability cool downs. Software that redirects or copies a player’s input to multiple game clients or browser windows is permitted.

Account Actions

Penalties

Any dishonorable behavior can result in account penalties. There are a variety of penalties, such as temporary revocation of chat privileges, temporary account suspension, or even permanent account closure in the case of the most heinous or habitual dishonorable behavior. In general, each penalty’s severity is commensurate with the infraction. However, frequency is also a factor when we review reports of dishonorable behavior, both for the specific type of infraction and the overall demeanor of the account.

Disputes

Our Customer Service and Community reps are trained to the highest standard, and empowered to foster and preserve a friendly, fun, and safe play environment for all of our players. While penalty levels for confirmed dishonorable behavior are not open to discussion, in the event that you believe your account has received a penalty for a dishonorable act that was not committed on it, you can request a second, final review of the investigation at accountadmin.support@snailgamesusa.com. Abuse of this system by those who simply wish to argue about our standards of conduct, or intentionally waste the time of reps and other players is a highly dishonorable act.

Account Security

Snail will never ask for your passwords. You are solely responsible for the following aspects of security for your accounts:

Keep your contact information up-to-date.

Maintain secrecy of account names and passwords.

Use passwords that are easy to remember, but difficult to guess.

Do not use the same passwords for your accounts and your economy locks.

Avoid writing down your account names and passwords. If you must write them down, store them in a safe place, inaccessible or unknown to friends and family.

Secure your email address and the computers you play on.

Regularly scan for unwanted viruses, keyloggers, trojans, and adware which can compromise your computer’s security and performance. Many free scanning programs are available, but not all scan for every type of threat; ensure you scan for every type!

Learn how to identify phishing scams, and turn on your browser’s phishing filter.

Type addresses manually, rather than clicking links that may mask alternate destinations. Better yet, use a trusted search engine to locate the desired page link.

Account ownership/sharing/transfer

If you lose access to or control of the email address registered on the account, Snail accounts using that email address may be forfeit.

Restoration Requests

Character

As each player is permitted to have any number of accounts, and every character can learn and employ every skill in the game (to varying degrees), we encourage players to refrain from deleting established characters. In most cases, Snail is unable to restore deleted characters.

Cultivation

Snail is unable to assist with lost Cultivation points. If you feel such a loss occurred due to a bug, please report the bug on our forums so the developers can investigate and prevent the issue from recurring.

Guild

Snail feels that there are sufficient safeguards available in Heroes of Gaia to prevent abuse of Guilds and Guild Banks. As such, we will be unable to assist with any cases of mismanagement of the promotion and abdication mechanics, or any changes to guild bank stores that are not in alignment with the guild’s rules.

Item

Heroes of Gaia employs several safeguards to ensure the preservation of important and irreplaceable items. As such, Snail will be unable to assist with lost items. Please use care when managing your inventory.

Game bug

In most cases, Snail is unable to assist with loot left unclaimed as a result of game bugs. Please report such issues in the appropriate forum so we can investigate the matter and prevent recurrence.

Names

Availability

Snail is unable to assist with checking for name availability.

Explanation

Snail is unable to reveal the reasons for a name’s availability or lack thereof, except why a name is honorable or dishonorable.

Reclamation

Snail is unable to free names for use that are not currently available for use.

Gameplay Question/Hints

While Snail is unable to provide hints or answer gameplay questions in a live format, we are happy to aid players in finding the proper resources for these matters on our website.

Bug Reports

In order to ensure efficient processing of bug reports, and efficient correction of reproducible bugs, Snail requests that all player reports of bugs be posted in our bug forum here. Please note that we will be unable to respond to individual bug reports; keep an eye on patch notes for updates. Your assistance in making Heroes of Gaia the best game it can be is greatly appreciated!

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